Posted
by
Unknown Lamer
on Thursday October 11, 2012 @02:31PM
from the gauntlet-has-been-thrown dept.

DMA-BUF is a recent kernel feature that allows multiple GPUs to quickly copy data into each others' framebuffers. A use case would be the NVIDIA Optimus that pairs a fast GPU with an Intel integrated GPU, where the NVIDIA GPU writes into the Intel framebuffer when it is active. But, NVIDIA won't be able to use this infrastructure because it's GPL. Alan Cox replied on LKML to a request from one of their engineers to mark the API non-GPL: "NAK. This needs at the very least the approval of all rights holders for
the files concerned and all code exposed by this change. Also I'd note if you are trying to do this for the purpose of combining
it with proprietary code then you are still in my view as a (and the view
of many other) rights holder to the kernel likely to be in breach
of the GPL requirements for a derivative work. You may consider that
formal notification of my viewpoint. Your corporate legal team can
explain to you why the fact you are now aware of my view is important to
them."
The rest of the thread is worth a read (a guy from RedHat agrees that this code is GPL and cannot become non-GPL without relicensing from a major subset of graphics system contributors). This has a ripple effect: it means that all of the ARM SoC GPU drivers can't use it either, and it may prevent any proprietary drivers for the proposed DRI version 3.

Desktop will soon be a niche that will mostly be Linux users that want it. The Year of the "Linux Desktop" will not be due to Linux's gains in popularity of that particular realm, but the reduction of desktop use by those not using Linux.

OS X's kernel is Mach, not BSD. It's had BSD api and userland tacked on to it but it's actually Mach. It's so altered though that it doesn't really count as either but instead something new and on it's own. Android at it's core is still a linux kernel and not some mutant derivative but actual linux with linux API driving the OS services that drive the jvm that drive the apps you know.

As AC since I'm sure this will garner much hate, but this is honest speculation with the intent of stoking real discussion:

1. NVIDIA and Intel want to use a new whiz-bang feature in the Linux kernel to bring faster and more feature-rich graphics to Linux. This is a good thing, a very good thing.2. The current licensing in the kernel makes that impossible unless NVIDIA open sources its IP. Whether this is good is questionable because:
a. It means NVIDIA has to give up a competitive edge OR
b. NVIDIA has to write code and implement hardware in a manner that specifically prevents them from having a competitive edge.3. NVIDIA's only other option is massive duplication of effort and a fork of the Linux kernel. This is a questionable premise.

So, given that NVIDIA's choice is to give up a competitive edge or to intentionally implement its feature set in an obstructionist manner, how is the GPL "good" in this case?

I appreciate how you used the term "competitive edge" three times in such a short post. Oh, wait, no, I meant "I am nauseated by how". Don't they teach marketing shills anything in terms of subtlety any more?

Anyway, you seem to be asserting that Nvidia's "competitive edge" is completely software-related. As in, the hardware — the actual graphics-computing stuff they sell, mind you — is somehow less important than the exact underpinnings of the drivers. This is an assertion that makes no sense to kernel developers. The drivers are just there to provide a way for the OS to communicate with the hardware. The hardware is supposed to be the magical part here.

In my opinion, the ridiculously secretive nature of Nvidia, especially in the face of their major competitors opening up their drivers, is highly suspicious. After all, I thought they sold video cards, not drivers. It makes me think they're hiding Bad Things(tm) in the drivers. Unlicensed IP, perhaps? Evidence that their "value" models of video cards are actually the "premium" cards with drivers that shut down certain features? Crappy code? Or maybe just a behind-the-times product manager?

I read once (I think in a post on slashdot a couple of years back) that many hardware manufacturers keep their device drivers proprietary in order to hide the details of the hardware implementation.And that this is not so much to maintain, "a competitive edge," as to protect themselves from patent lawsuits from their competitors.

So my reference is possibly not the most reliable, but my point is that they might not be hiding stuff just to screw over consumers. There are many other possible reasons.

How much of a "competitive edge" is really in their driver? And what kind of IP would be "open sourced"? This is GPL V2 we are talking about, they don't have to abandon any patents covered by the code or anything.

Intel and AMD actually do open source drivers for linux. Those can make use of the wizbang. Who is at a competitive edge in that case? The one that makes a driver that can use the wizbang, or the one who cant*?

Note there is a non Nvidia sponsered open source driver for their cards. They are more than welecome to add any whizbang they want with that.

They have many licensed components in their code. So they have to remove all that and rework it, and do it in such a fashion as to not get sued by those companies (who might claim that the nVidia programmers couldn't work on the new code since they'd seen the licensed code). This isn't just some more minor features such as S3 texture compression, but OpenGL itself. Go look it up, OpenGL isn't a free "do whatever you like" setup. There is licensing for it for companies like nVidia.

Even worse is that because the issue isn't just opening the source, but actually GPLing it, that makes it so much harder. Some of their licensed components are things the companies might be ok with source distribution. However nVidia doesn't have the right to relicense that code under the GPL. So even if they opened it, it wouldn't do any good as the GPL is what is required here.

So the argument of "just open the driver" is somewhat unrealistic. It isn't just that nVidia likes to have a competitive edge, though they surely do, but that it would be a major issue and a lot more work to try and do so, if it were even possible.

Again, take the OpenGL issue since it is a pretty fundamental one. nVidia licenses the code and has the latest OpenGL 4.3 implemented on cards that support it. Ok so let's say they decide to grab the Mesa code for an OSS branch. It's MIT license which is GPL compatible so good to go right? Well, not really. Mesa is OpenGL 3.1, 3 years out of date, and it only recently got that. So they can either deal without a bunch of features on all platforms, have two different drivers one full featured on Windows and such, one with less features, or they can invest a ton of work to try and make their own up to date OSS OpenGL implementation and hope they aren't sued.

Well, we do want an open source system, for a variety of legitimate reasons. NVIDIA's edge is in hardware design, not software design. I, for one, would be happy that they provided an open source driver that give me access to all the 1 year old functionalities of their cards. That would not make them lose any edge.

Also, a thing that NVIDIA probably fails to realize is that open sourcing their drivers will result in far more developers on it, therefore will probably raise their quality.

I honestly doubt that ATI could get an edge from looking at the code of NVIDIA's drivers. Maybe some small marginal improvement but nothing that would improve their hardware.

I think that this argument has been mainly FUD. Linux developers are a small population but they are opinion leaders in the market. The first company that goes open source will probably receive a popularity boost that will offset the little "edge" that they fear losing. Right now, this is Intel, despite very inferior hardwares, that is becoming more popular because of their 100% open source drivers.

I disagree. AMD has had open source drivers (and specs) for years now, and the quality is still terrible. Intel has open source drivers and I still wouldn't choose Intel graphics for anything serious.

Sure, if all you want is a picture on your screen, then even the nouveau driver will get you there. But if you want fast graphics, like you get on windows, then this licensing crap is just another way of ensuring it won't come to linux.

If NVIDIA started only offering its binary driver on BSD, windows and OSX, I think it's more likely that Linux users (particularly commercial ones) would switch to another OS, than switch to another graphics card manufacturer.

If the quality of the other drivers/hardware was better, then that might not be the case, but AFAIC(oncerned) AMD's drivers are a bit flaky (even on windows) and intel's hardware has yet to come near the performance of AMD/NVIDIA.

Your are looking at it from the perspective of the company that did NOT write the code and is NOT interested in contributing. The GPL is not good for them. The GPL is "good" for everyone else. It is "good" for the whole world because it is NOT good for moochers. Yeah, it would be nice if we could let everyone, including moochers, use our open source code, but then we would accomplish less good overall. So, it is "good" that the GPL is so bad for NVIDIA.

1. I want to give away a large amount of money to the poor. This is a good thing, a very good thing. I know that the bank near my house has a large amount of money.
2. The current licensing of the bank makes it impossible for me to get the money, unless I work hard to earn it. Whether this is good is questionable because:
a. It means that I have to get tired OR
b. It means that I have to work like everybody else does for a living, preventing me to have an easier life than all the others.
3) My only other option is that I have to find a less easy way to obtain the money rather than simply picking it up the from the bank. This is a questionable premise.

So, given that my choice is to work to earn money or to give up the idea of giving money to the poor, how are private property laws "good" in this case?

They woul dhave a bad time coming along anyway, since they can't be compatible with the secure boot (UEFI) way of working (workaround if one prefers), that is being adopted by major distributions: all Kernel level code, and X11 code, will have to be signed to work out of the box in a UEFI restricted boot environment. And any distro that would sign binary code coming from NVIDIA or whoever else would be mad.

It may be we get some months across a new "no working 3d drivers" dark ages on the Linux desktop, but one way or the other, the time for proprietary drivers is past.

And any distro that would sign binary code coming from NVIDIA or whoever else would be mad.

Sometimes I wonder what reality Slashdot lives in, a distro signing a nVidia driver would be no different than say Microsoft signing a nVidia driver. Of course the puritan distributions won't but they don't ship proprietary code anyway, it's not like Ubuntu would "vouch" more for nVidia than Microsoft does. If the nVidia code is full of shitty security holes that's not really the distro's problem as long as it's "genuine" nVidia code.

Am I missing something? Isn't this going to hurt Linux a lot more than it is going to hurt nVidia? Sure, it would be great if nVidia open-sourced their driver code, but it's pretty clear that this is not going to happen. What effect will this have other than to make Linux drivers for nVidia cards of inferior quality?

For Linux the religion, this is a triumph. For Linux the operating system, it is a major setback.

So what, exactly, is linux to you? If you want a proprietary operating system with closed drivers, there are plenty. Bending over sideways for a paranoid corporation just to get high definition pornography in 3D on your notebook sounds like a real bad idea to me.

Linux developers don't care, nor shoud they, about the decision of one company to play nice or not.

Linux kernel developers have been letting Nvidia get away with the whole "binary blob" thing for a long time. Nvidia has taken no real steps to come into conformance with the GPL requirements. They keep getting a pass for their bad citizenship.

Eventually bad actors (Nvidia) either have to shape up, or they need to ship out.

At the moment Nvidia is freeloading on the linux kernel. They are putting themselves in there for free. Now they are asking to break even more rules, or more accurately, to have the rules changed in the name of their personal interests. Nvidia has fouled their own bed, but now they are whining that they don't want to have to lie in the filth of their own making. They are a full grown company. They know what they _ought_ to be doing. They want a pass to have things their own way regardless.

Sometimes you have to tell a spoilt child that they don't get the lolly this time.

The current Nvidia binary blob resides in a bit of a grey area. They have a binary blob that was originally written without looking at the linux specs, and is not a derivative work of the kernel.

They then have an open-source "shim" that is clearly a derivative work of the kernel that allows the binary blob (which has its own API) to interface with the kernel (which has a different API).

The GPL says that any derivative work must be released under the GPL. Normally (as a logic shortcut) this means anything linked against the kernel, however in this case there is a real argument that the binary blob is NOT in fact a derivative work.

However, now we have a new funky feature being added to the kernel. If the binary blob is updated to make use of it, then there is a reasonable argument that it now actually IS a derivative work of the kernel and thus should be released under the GPL.

You and everyone KEEP presuming the only space at stake here. There's another and they want to play in this space badly because it's big-bucks for them or they wouldn't have done it in the first place. (Hint: There was no good reason for the Linux drivers they've made to date- because there really wasn't a market for those end-user drivers (these are treated as such by the community, but they're not really for the consumer market...) until recently in the first place.

Think engineering workstations (early reasons...seriously, for both AMD and NVidia...) and supercomputing clusters using GPGPU computation (There's a reason for the opening of AMD's stuff...that's part of that.).

If they want to play in that space...they're going to have to change attitudes, much like AMD did.

Translation: Go see your corp lawyers. FYI, you're about to get spanked.

Slightly more neutral translation: now that you have been officially informed we will not be marking it as non-GPL, if you use it, you are in violation of copyright. And your having been told means you don't have a legal leg to stand on if you ignore this.

No, that isn't the implication. Whether they are in violation of copyright or not depends on whether their drivers are a derivative work of Linux, and if so whether fair use would allow them anyway. Both of these things are decided by courts not by the copyright holder. The significance of his notification is in determining whether the infringement is willful or not, and thus eligible for stronger penalties.

Yeah, that's more like it. These guys are probably nVidia employees who like Linux and probably had something to do with convincing their bosses to let them work on Linux drivers. They asked Cox if something could be done about the licensing of a little part of the kernel so the drivers they write could use a new feature. Cox told them to F off.

I really doubt nVidia cares. The only ones disappointed are these driver coders and anybody who wants to use multiple GPUs on Linux.

While Linus got lots of publicity for mouthing off at Nvidia over Optimus support, the truth is that X.org just recently released server 1.13 that has initial support for Optimus-like technologies and it would not have mattered one bit what license Nvidia used for its driver code.

The cold hard truth is: Nvidia isn't going to GPL its drivers and it couldn't do so even if it wanted to. Nvidia's developers *have* been trying to help out with adding code to the kernel for DMA-BUF that will be GPL and will help other pieces of hardware in addition to Nvidia hardware. There will probably have to be a compromise at some point on this even if the idealogical purists get their panties in a knot over it.

Nvidia isn't going to GPL its drivers and it couldn't do so even if it wanted to.

Of course Nvidia could GPL its drivers. That "they can't do it" been said ever since the first proprietary Nvidia Linux driver, and back then it was blamed on non-specified technology licensed from SGI. SGI then stated publicly that they had absolutely no problem with their technology ending up in a GPL'd Linux driver.

It is just a pitiful excuse. Luckily, between "secure boot" and this, the excuse will not last much longer. Then it will be either GPL or nothing at all.

In truth, that statement was a LIE, and they knew it. If there was actual cards that I could've laid hands on back when the NV1 was out, there would've been a Utah-GLX driver because they made the programming interfaces for an NV1 publicly available at the time I was one of the Utah-GLX developers.

Playing devil's Advocate here, as personally I agree with this (and don't let the proprietary nVidia driver anywhere near my system).But just for kicks, how does the recent case of Oracle trying (and failing) to claim copyright on the Java APIs affect this.

If you cannot copyright an API, then you cannot apply a copyright license either.

What if nVidia challenged this with exactly the same arguments that Google used with Dalvik.

You are getting muddled. The googVorc case was if oracle could copy right the API (that is, the list of function name, their hierarchy, intput/outputs) and prevent google from doing a clean room implementation that complies with their API. In this case, they are saying NVIDIA can't make an API call _into their code_ and ship proprietary bundles linked against their GPL library. NVIDIA could do a clean-room re-implementation of the kernel if they wanted to, but that is not what is going on here.

If you don't have the constraint that linking is derivative then the whole notion of copy-left is dead, as you can fully use any library in any application. The authors are giving you a license to use their code for free, they can put what ever restrictions on that license they want.

The preceeding mail from Jan-2012 mentions the reason why they need to have the drivers that interact with the interface gpl-ed:

'A bug on a driver using such low-level interface could cause side effectsat the wrong places. In order to handle such bugs, the developers and themaintainers of both subsystems need to see the source code of the entirepipeline, with is not possible if is there any non-GPL'd driver.

I've never really understood so much of the background on this. I really don't. Nvidia are probably *the only* fucking company that really went the whole way and really release the right 'kind of ' full drivers for Linux. Yes, they are closed source binary. Yes, they are proprietry. Yes, they don't comply with religious level political idealogy. But they contribute in a less than optimal way to your platform.

And your platform, at least in the short and medium term would be vastly shittier without their efforts.

So, next you publicly go viral dropping a bucket of shit over them. Their response has been moderatly to try to come in and talk, make changes and be more of a interactive unit with you. I bet that the devs inside the company are probably very pro making progress but face real world limits of legal and other things that they themselves are not empowered to fundamentally change.

I'm not surprised at Alan's answer - but here is my raw take on this. What would have been the better way forward was to take their request and frame it globally to that group of people and put Nvidia's request forward. I appreciate that many would likely answer no, and I appreciate this would perhaps not be what Nvidia wanted, but it would have opened a bridge for interaction and perhaps longer term bridge building. Instead, they get a fuck you, fuck your company, and do this our way or the highway.; What were Nvidia trying to do? Provide an answer to the problem they had a bucket of shit thrown over them in public about. ie - trying to solve a problem they were abused about.

The benefit of doing this is fixing something in linux - albeit with a closed driver that people asked for. Linux users asked for this. Linux Kernal people bitched about it. Linux coders refusing to help provide this moves this off being a purely Nvidia are a bunch of fucks to shooting your own platform in both feet.

I don't fucking get it. These bits of code I presume are already fully in Linux. Sat there in daylight.Refusing to let Nvidia use them to help you do something_you_asked for is demented. Or rather - let me reframe that - Its really lame to not engage in a process to find a way forward instead of ramming the ideology down the throat of a vendor who is a closed source bunch - but have come to try and engage with you on a problem.

Let me put it more plainly. Linux needs Nvidia more than Nvidia needs linux - but together you make something that is symbiotic. You think your mythical Ubuintu tablets are going to surface on the very proprietry ARM platform by not getting down and working with people like Nvidia on problems. Linux won't run 'well' on their platform without their help. You want to be there? Take your heads out of your asses.

As much as Linux gets hobbled by closed source folks not playing the game, its just as hobbled by killing off their interactions and opportunities by being too hard headed about the religio-political idealogy.

And a fucking note to the Intel GPU Linux fanboys. The drivers have almost always been shit. And the hardware is low end garbage. I'll take a Linux box with Nvidia GPU *EVERY fucking time over intel gfx. Every time.

The GPU is no anymore a peripheral device, it's more and more integrated on the same die as the CPU. Intel, AMD or ARM have plans to lowering the difference even more on how GPU and CPU will exchange data and will view the rest of the system. Basically, the CPU cores and GPU cores will share the same location into the architecture. This move is not so different from the integration of the FPU core into the CPU that have existed back to the 80486/68040 days. About ten years before the FPU integration, the FPU chips was a lucrative business: this part was so expensive that it was an option that only a few can buy. Not anymore, FPU less CPU are now only found in the lower part of the ARM embedded market. There is no x86_64 chip without FPU by the design of the instruction set. GPU is the next core to get the same integration.

What this means ?

First, since Nvidia don't own a licence to build x86_64 chip, the game is actually already over for them. There known that since the failed merge talk with AMD and explain why there focus on the high end and ARM chips since this time. This also explain why Linus Torvalds "fuck you Nvidia" response was focused on the Tegra ARM SoC despite the fact that the original question was about a x86_64 laptop.

Secondly, Intel and AMD known that sooner or later, the GPU core will be so integrated with the CPU core that there cannot be managed anymore by only a driver to do in a efficient way there new roles aside of the graphic display. The trigger point will probably be when the GPU will passe on the CPU side of the MMU (or something that look like this). At this stage the paging management for the GPU will be almost impracticable from within a driver to cooperate efficiently with the core operating system, not counting the brainfuck crap in case there are not developed by closely related peoples. This don't automatically say that GPU driver will cease to exist for some graphic aspect, but the GPUCPU part will end up into the kernel for the most critical aspects. It's easy to see why on Linux, access to the GPU from a proprietary driver is really not an option for the future (even if the current issue is only about DMA sharing data between devices).

Face it, the only reason for DMA-BUF at all is to use multiple GPUs, some better than others. It will typically be an Optimus laptop with Intel + Nvidia, or maybe AMD APU + AMD GPU. But without proprietary drivers the bigger GPU is entirely pointless! Say you have an Intel IGP plus a nvidia GPU, if you use nouveau on the nvidia GPU then you lose so much performance and battery life it's useless and you're better off disabling it and staying on Intel. Unless you like wasting your money for a minor improvment with terrible inefficiency.

So, linux is really jumping the shark, I guess what's left is distros should switch to BSD just like debian/kFreebSD, starting with Mint. Unless this terrible situation is resolved.

They probably don't want to because they likely infringe on either software patents in the drivers themselves or hardware patents that opening their drivers would expose. Once they opened their drivers they probably would get jumped on by 40 million patent trolls and sued into the ground, as well as being injunction'd from releasing any driver for any operating system (read: not make any money, have increased legal costs, and go out of business).

This did not stop Intel from releasing drivers, or AMD from releasing detailed technical documentation. And the Nouveau drivers already expose some of the functionality of NVIDIA's hardware. Also, both AMD and NVIDIA chips are being used in game consoles and those are programmed by sending command lists directly to the GPU, so console game developers have detailed technical descriptions of those GPUs; it's not like their programming interface is so secret that it never leaves NVIDIA HQ.

Intel did not release their drivers under the GPL. Intel implemented new drivers from scratch. Relicensing existing code is really hard for something like a graphics driver, which contains code licensed from third parties. Oh, and they're under an MIT license like the rest of X11 and the DRI infrastructure, not the GPL.

Naive? Maybe. I'm not an industry insider, so please educate me if I make incorrect assumptions or overlook important issues.

Idealism? No. I'm typing this on my PC that runs NVIDIA's proprietary Linux driver. I'm saying NVIDIA could release an open source driver, not that they should. (*)

NVIDIA for one is nowhere near the size or capacity of Intel, in terms of development, ability to make, influence, dominate markets, set platforms... Secondly, who wants to bet who has more patents, strings and connections, and ways to leverage force in the event that all cards are laid bare?

In a battle with a patent troll, your own patent portfolio, market dominance etc doesn't matter, only that you have a good legal team and deep enough pockets. In a patent battle with a competitor, I don't think open drivers make that much of a difference, since the opponent will have enough expertise to demonstrate patent infringement even without the driver source code.

Anyway, as far as the GPL is concerned, if it's version 2, then they probably wouldn't have to worry:

The Linux kernel is licensed under GPLv2 and that is unlikely to change.

they COULD build inter-operable code and simply...not distribute the GPL code in question, and leave it to the user to download their driver, like, you know, they already do.

This discussion is not about NVIDIA distributing GPL-ed kernel code, it's about which functions a non-GPL driver is allowed to call. The view of the kernel maintainers seems to be that loading a module makes that code part of the kernel, not a separate program and it is therefore bound to licensing rules set by the kernel. If this is not true, then there is no difference between EXPORT_SYMBOL and EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL and there is also no need to change the declaration of the dma-buf symbols.

(*) I would like them to release an open source driver, but I know it's not likely to happen. NVIDIA's driver is designed to run the same code on many platforms, I think there was a presentation that said 90% of the code is platform independent. This approach makes it harder to integrate with Linux though, since NVIDIA has their own solutions for things that Linux and Xorg solve in a different way. So even if the driver source is opened, it would be a lot of work to make the driver integrate well with the existing open source graphics infrastructure. And if that is achieved, NVIDIA would be facing two driver source trees to maintain instead of one, although the Linux-specific one would be considerably smaller than the generic one.

You may argue that the GPL is the big dog in FOSS, but looking around at the various large FOSS projects out there, Linux is the only major GPL'ed software.

So you've never heard of GCC, or the GNU userland utilities that most Linuxes and BSDs (including OS X) use, or the Busybox userland utilities that all the rest of the (embedded, etc.) Linuxes use? All that's GPL, and (IMHO) more important than the Linux kernel (even though I'm not one of those folks who cares about calling it "GNU/Linux").

Are you hating or just misinformed? NVIDIA ranks second in terms of total lines changed for the ARM kernel, and fourth in terms of number of changesets for all employers or organizations. That's sharing.

The only thing they don't share is their graphics drivers - which seems like a fair trade overall. nVidia has licensed patented code which they couldn't share even if they wanted to.

NVIDIA will likely just build their own DMA memcpy routine - because copying memory is SOOO unique.

Full disclosure: I develop (unrelated) proprietary kernel modules, I'm very familiar with the licensing, patent and copyright issues and we work within the GPL limits defined by the kernel team.

NVIDIA only shares the stuff they're forced to share by virtue of the GPL. The lines they added to the ARM kernel are there only because they were forced to release the core changes needed to support their ARM SOCs.

A couple years ago, back when they had the upper hand, NVIDIA did not even open up the drivers for their ethernet chips, $DEITY knows what trade secrets could have been hidden in a ethernet driver.

Also, don't say that they're not opening the code because it's licensed by third parties: they don't even release documentation for their chips. The truth is that they don't care about open source, and will behave only when forced to.

Full disclosure: Linus Torvalds develops the linux kernel, he's very vamiliar with the licensing, patent and copyright issues and relationships with NVIDIA, and sent them to "fuck themselves" (sic.).

Right, because promoting open source GPL-compatible drivers didn't work for Linux.

Oh, wait, it worked. The Linux hardware support is overall quite good (with many hardware manufacturers working with upstream to contribute drivers). In fact, Nvidia is a minority - Intel has the biggest market share [jonpeddie.com] in graphic chips (avobe 50%), AMD/ATI is second. Both have contributed open source drivers which are getting better and better.

Apparently they think it is worth it, as they have been doing it for a while. It is all a matter of who has the power. The tech company that wants the market or the consumers. In this case it is the consumers (or fanatics if you prefer).

Bowing to the will of tech companies is the best way to have very disgusting stuff pushed into your throat.

Ever wondered why AMD opened up most of their programming info? Stop and contemplate why they did that and offer off-and-on assistance in the FOSS driver stack at their expense. It's not because of them being altruistic. It's not because they see more than a nascent market for games.

It's because of the same thing you pointed out. That 10G card is important to supercompute clusters. So's the GPU. I honestly wish people would step back and quit thinking with the blinders you just espoused just now.

GPL licensors demand that others don't redistribute GPL code as their own. Proprietary licensors demand that others don't use their code at all without their express permission, full stop. Who's the fanatic here?

The reason they won't go open source is that it exposes them to patent lawsuits, frivolous or otherwise.

I've been hearing that for probably a decade. I used to believe it, I don't any more. The reason for my change is that AMD/ATI and Intel don't seem to have had any significant problems in that regard with their open source gpu drivers.

So, either Nvidia explicitly knows they are violating some patents (and haven't don't anything about it for ~10 years) in which case they are deliberately sitting on a ticking time bomb anyway, or it is just misdirection.

The Intel drivers are a better example: they are rock solid, Intel has contributed tons toward advancing the graphics stack, etc. AMD has maintained a split development effort: hiring external companies and providing some docs for the Free drivers, all the while putting their main development effort into their proprietary FGLRX driver. I suspect that's the real reason their drivers are kind of crap.

If it leads to vendor GPU drivers being developed in the open then I'm in!

Why were you upset again?

...because it won't, and never will, and because this is the Linux community attempting to force Nvidia to develop open-source drivers, which is just about the exact opposite of freedom. Or at least, that is what it looks like to me (hard to say, since IANAL nor do I work on the Linux kernel), and therefore is what it will look like to a lot of people. And it's why graphics on Linux sucks, forcing people to use Windows instead.

Linux's greatest enemy is quite often itself. Which is fine, if you only ever want to use it on a server... but if you want it to be a serious competitor to Windows, it won't be. Ever. There will never be a "year of Linux on the desktop", not so long as these kinds of restrictions exist.

Linux has a license (GPL) that states some requirements on what you can and can't do with it, this license is wrote that way so the code will remain free. This is an ideological ideal and not a business ideal, therefore they clash. It protects against companies like Microsoft doing 'Embrace, Extend, Extinguish". Evidently you like the idea of a world where a few patent holders control our computing technology. True freedom is also allowing the biggest, baddest, and meanest to set the law. True freedom is allowing business interests to take chunks of Linux wrap them up in binaries and keep them hidden away from everyone the community that built it. True freedom is a person busting in to a house with a gun, killing everybody, and taking what they want without any worry of law.

The GPL is preventing that corporate psychopath from taking what he wants with his power and instead establishes a level playing field.

It seems odd you want 'Linux' to become Microsoft to beat Microsoft, I don't see how anybody gains anything in the end.

The GPL is preventing that corporate psychopath from taking what he wants with his power and instead establishes a level playing field.

During this week I skipped using an open source component for a work project and started developing one of our own. If the project had been of supreme quality I might have created a wrapper which would have allowed us to use it in the (proprietary) project as it was GPLv2. If the component had been BSD or some other reasonable license (WTFPL is my favourite) I would have fixed the project and sent the creator the patches.

We do have plans for releasing at least some of our stuff as open source, but I don't think it will be GPL. Then again GPL would prevent some competitors from using it, but that isn't exactly my idea of free.

The GPL doesn't prevent your competitor from using it. It prevents your competitor from taking it, improving it, and using it directly against you. In the GPL he has to release the improvements back to the community. The entire 'community' benefits in the end because of the code you released.

With the BSD license, the competitor takes your code, makes it better then charges you to use the improved features. Granted there are a lot of cases where BSD code is good, but long term open computing platforms are not one of them.

In every case a freedom has a set of associated costs. If you use 'free' software to reduce business costs, there is going to be a cost when it comes to selling the software. It seems an odd position that you want the code to be 'free' as in no rules so you can sell it and be protected by IP, copyright, and trademark rules.

Linux developers are not trying to "force" anybody to do anything. Nvidia is trying to force the linux community to accept their unacceptable "super secret" blob into the kernel agains the linux community's development and participatation standards.

If I showed up on your doorstep and said "you have to let me use your bathroom and your kitchen, but I am not going to wash my hands or put on pants" you would not be "forcing" me to (anything) by saying that my intended pantless, unwashed use of your facilities was unacceptable.

The Linux community is telling nvidia "we use soap and pants here, if you won't do likewise, we don't feel like accomodating you."

Nvidia _knows_ they want in, otherwise they wouldent be trying to get in, Linux Don't Care if they come or not, but if they come they need pants...

Requiring someone to meet minimum standards for participation is not "forcing them" to do anything,

I have a feeling this is very much a "you can't eat you cake and have it too" situation... Linux has managed to badger many companies into eventually providing open source drivers for their various sound cards and network cards and raid controllers and wifi cards and whatnot. I admit, I have used the nVidia drivers quite a bit I'm glad it's not two dozen binary blobs around an open source mini-kernel, which is almost certainly what would have happened if Linux had a well defined ABI from the start. Graphics cards have by far been the hardest since they're huge drivers on top of a quickly changing and complex hardware, far exceeding anything else but they're also now almost alone in needing binary drivers.

Intel's driver are open source as always while their performance is starting to not suck horribly, AMD's open source efforts are ongoing, even nVidia has said they'd release some tidbits of 2D specifications at least. If you're going for the quick win of give me binaries and give them to me now, why pick this specific point in Linux history? Linux on the desktop is not growing, but it's not dying either and if you include Android then it's absolutely not dying on mobile. With the latest Mesa release Intel is up to OpenGL 3.1 support (3.0 on most other cards) and that's 3.5 years behind the standard - and full Open GL ES 2.0 support. Great? No. That terrible? Also no. Linux has persisted and procrastinated against the allure of binary drivers for 20 years now, if they do it a decade more I think the last pieces will fall in place.

And for a number of reason I still don't think it'll be YotLD, all open source drivers or not.

Your argument is a bit off - this isn't about Nvidia wanting to use "Free software" in their "closed source programmes", it's about Nvidia wanting to use an advertised feature of the Linux kernel platform to enhance performance *on Linux*. Nvidia already have access to similar functionality on Windows and OSX (or will soon) - they won't be taking anything from Linux to Windows or OSX if they used the feature Linux advertises.

All this is doing is hurting ongoing performance on Linux, and people are trying to blame Nvidia because of it.

But, what if this change means that nVidia and all ARM graphics drivers come up with their own non-GPL kernel API, it would probably not be compatible with DMA-BUF, and that means that the graphics drivers in the Linux kernel - both open source and not - would pick and choose which buffer sharing mechanism they support/use, leaving the rest out in the cold. This situation just so happens to negate the ENTIRE purpose DMA-BUF was created for, namely, to act as a SINGLE way for ALL drivers to share and pass buffers around. So, instead of creating a BETTER situation where all graphics drivers are compatible with each other (even the proprietary ones), we have a crappy situation that we've continued to have since day one - proprietary and open source graphics driver not playing nice with each other.

It's even in your short term and long term best interests to get everybody to use DMA-BUF, because the faster that happens the easier it is to use Linux, the more people start to use Linux, and Linux users slowly start to become more and more relevant to driver manufacturers to the point that, like Mac users, they become a profitable segment of the computer using population (note that this is both for desktop users with nVidia cards, or short term uses, and all ARM drivers for embedded devices which are becoming more popular, or long term uses), and graphics developers start to support them as best they can (read: supporting open source driver development).

While this is happening - in other words, while the world is ruled by proprietary graphics drivers because the open source ones suck (as is currently the case, and although it's improving is likely to continue to be the case for at least another two years), you can have your Left 4 Dead 2 on Linux with the proprietary nVidia driver that it needs, you can have lower power usage on all Linux laptops because Intel and nVidia cards can share buffers and therefore change which card is actively processing depending on what is running, and you can actually have useful drivers for all embedded devices until open source graphics drivers are available (whenever that happens, as it is barely on the radar of developers at this point).

So, you (and Alan Cox) can be complete dicks about this and hold the Linux desktop and Linux embedded devices with decent drivers back for years because nobody bothers to support such a tiny market with open source drivers, or you can allow proprietary graphics card manufacturers to keep their hold on graphics drivers for a few years and keep the vast majority of users happy because they have a device that works well enough (even though it doesn't have open source graphics drivers) UNTIL the community develops open source drivers themselves.

So, what's more important to you, possibly helping proprietary vendors temporarily and helping desktop and embedded users out tremendously for the next few years; or keeping your kernel untainted by proprietary crap, unhelpful to proprietary vendors, and keeping the kernel the same mess it has always been, and pissing off the vast majority of desktop and embedded users for years?

I would argue that Valve is only porting Steam and their games to Linux because the nVidia graphics drivers exist (because their games require OpenGL 4+, which isn't supported, and will not be support for years, by open source drivers). And yet, them porting their AAA title games is going to tremendously help Linux break out of its insignificant shell on the desktop - which will drive adoption, drive demand for Linux, and ultimately drive the demand for open source drivers anyway.

So, take a deep breath, calm down, and just accept the fact that allowing something to be temporarily imperfect in your world is a good trade off to make to have a much better world a few years from now.

Furthermore, DRI3 (the userspace API) will become dependent on DMA-BUF once it is developed, which means that DMA-BUF will become a usersp

So, you (and Alan Cox) can be complete dicks about this and hold the Linux desktop and Linux embedded devices with decent drivers back for years because nobody bothers to support such a tiny market with open source drivers, or you can allow proprietary graphics card manufacturers to keep their hold on graphics drivers for a few years and keep the vast majority of users happy because they have a device that works well enough (even though it doesn't have open source graphics drivers) UNTIL the community develops open source drivers themselves.

If it leads to vendor GPU drivers being developed in the open then I'm in!

Why were you upset again?

Because everyone was arguing that APIs are not copyrightable in the Oracle vs. Google case but somehow you think that they should be GPL? GPL is built on copyright law which means that you are saying that Oracle was right and that an API can be copyright protected.

Don't be a hypocrite. You either believe that APIs are copyrightable which means that Google should pay Oracle or you don't. If you don't then you cannot say that they are protected by GPL.

No, this is why it's GOOD, and why many developers, myself included, will not work on non-GPL projects. Without the GPL, they would have taken this code and added it to their proprietary code bases and we'd never have seen future improvements of it. That's not a good thing, ever.

But I'm torn because Nvidia is the only great solution for 3d on Linux right now. So my pragmatic self is screaming "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

Intel Ivy Bridge stuff is pretty awesome though, I use it more than the dedicated Nvidia gpu on my Clevo. I'm really hoping the next iteration of Intel GPUs makes dedicated support obsolete but it's just a dream;).

That's not what's happening at all.
The basic fact is: the Linux kernel sources are GPL licensed. This was an early decision by Linus, and no amount of wishing will change that. There are just to many contributors that would have to approve a re-license.

Now, the GPL is very clear regarding derived work: if you distribute such a work, it needs to have a GPL-compatible license and provide sources.

What constitutes a derived work for a kernel? Basically, calling any code from the kernel would create a derived work, so the Linux license contains exemptions for user space code that calls the kernel through the public interface.
However, in this case the nVidia driver would call an internal kernel function, that is not exempted, so this would create a GPL derived work. The function is so low level that it would create an intimate bond between the Linux kernel and the nVidia binary driver.

Even if the Linux maintainers would allow this, anyone that wrote any part of Linux could start a court case against nVidia for breach of license. Would that be a better outcome?

That is not correct. If the symbol is marked EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL then only GPL-licenced modules can use that symbol (i.e. call the API).
They are already unable to include the code in their proprietary driver, as the code is released under the GPL which already prohibits them copying the code into a non-GPL-compatible codebase.

Which is what, exactly? I'm a copyright attorney who has studied computer science at the post-graduate level (and am a Tau Beta Pi member), and I still can't give you a coherent, comprehensive definition for 'derived work' in software that's applicable throughout the whole of the United States, let alone internationally. The GPL is a clusterfuck in that respect, and it's never been considered by any authoritative (i.e., Federal Circuit level) court...

I thought Oracle v. Google said APIs weren't copyrightable. As such, GPL-only APIs make no sense because the API can't be copyrighted to begin with.

You're wrong.

It is fine for someone to go and make a new, compatible implementation of the DMA-BUF API, with the same calling conventions etc., and license it however they wish. That is what the Oracle vs Google judgement said.

It is not okay to link your code into the GPL version of the DMA-BUF API unless your code is also GPL'd. That is something different.

Okay, so it's not freedom then. It's quasi-freedom. But at least no one has the freedom to take my quasi-freedom away. If they want in then they have to add to the pool of quasi-freedom instead of taking anything away.

If this were BSD, Alan Cox would have had his hard work stolen from him against his will, and he wouldn't have been able to do anything about it. Nvidia could have taken his code and released it in their binary blobs, and he'd never see any benefit from it again.

My freedoms all come with a 'but'. I can swing my fists all I want, but not if I hit someone. I can own anything I want, but not other people. I consider the BSD license less free because it allows others to infringe on people's freedom. I avoid BSD licensed code as much as is feasible for this reason. In the long run it is poisonous to my freedom even if it provides no obstacles in the short-term.